


Volant

by Sealie



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 02:47:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2332451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sealie/pseuds/Sealie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could hear the wind ruffling the individual feathers of the seabird flying overhead. Ellison opened his eyes and identified the Arctic Tern. A tiny, beady black eye seemed to acknowledge his interest, before the bird flew on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Volant

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: g  
> Warnings: none in particular. Caveat lector  
> Disclaimer: writing for fun not for profit.  
> Comments: British English spelling.  
> Spoilers: none.  
> for MaDonna.

He could hear the wind ruffling the individual feathers of the seabird flying overhead. Ellison opened his eyes and identified the Arctic Tern. A tiny, beady black eye seemed to acknowledge his interest, before the bird flew on. Ellison watched it soar over the cliff edge and then dip low arrowing to the crashing grey surf. Sentinel vision had its advantages; he did not even need to leave his comfy, padded deckchair to track its course. 

“Nice nap?” Blair asked without lifting his head from his journal. 

“Yes,” Ellison said simply, his body now craved the occasional nap and he indulged himself as often as necessary. 

Blair smiled around the end of the pencil he was gnawing. 

_You can always separate our pencils,_ Ellison reflected, _chewed and not chewed._

Jim shifted his leg on its cushion then rubbed his aching knee. It wasn’t too bad, the arthritis only flared up after he indulged in rich food and red wine. 

“Okay?” Blair asked again. He removed his pencil and scratched a line in his book. 

“Yup.”

“You know.” Blair finally raised his eyes from contemplating his deathless prose. He coiled a finger around a grey-shot corkscrew curl before saying, “Maybe it’s too damp here? Maybe we need to be somewhere warmer?”

“I like it,” Ellison said. “It’s quiet and clean.” He mused a moment. “You warm enough? You want to be somewhere warmer?”

“No, I love it here.” Blair looked out over the headland and smiled. Jim saw it through his eyes. Their lighthouse home stood proud on an exposed headland. To the north a stretch of cliff arched around the bay. The western seaboard of the Atlantic pummelled the rocky shore. Grey whales and tiny dolphins swum in the ocean depths. 

It was austere and brilliant. But most of all it was peaceful. 

The salt air was invigorating and soothed his stressed, sentinel senses. 

“How’s the book going?”

“Cool,” Blair said absently. The pencil was back in his mouth. “You know, I thought that the words would flow more easily. I’ve got my research notes and theses, but writing our memoirs is difficult.”

“I guess it’s different to writing a scientific paper, Professor Sandburg.” 

Blair shrugged half-heartedly. “I’ve gotta be subjective rather than objective.”

“Why don’t you settle for objectively subjective?”

“Or subjectively objective.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.” 

Blair snorted. “And for me to write the story of our lives unemotionally is possible.” 

It was Jim’s turn to snort. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m glad you agreed to help.”

“I don’t have anything to do with it.”

Blair stared right at him. “Hey, you have to proof and edit everything.” 

“Yeah, but I don’t contribute.” 

“You contribute every time you write a note in the margin.”

“You’re not going to put my name on the cover?” Jim asked horrified. 

Blair looked away. 

“Chief?” Jim drawled.

“’Course I’m putting your name as an author -- we’re partners. Nobody would believe me if I said that you had had nothing to do with the book.” 

Jim growled, and shuffled sullenly back into the depths of his padded deckchair. “Bah Humbug.”

Blair laughed outright. 

Jim basked in his glee, enjoying the simple pleasure of making someone laugh. Still chortling, Blair managed to write three lines. Jim relaxed into the scritch-scritch-scritch of the pencil. In the evening, Blair would transpose the latest chapter of their story onto his laptop computer, but he had always preferred to draft his notes in longhand, even when he had been a student so many, many years ago. 

The rasp of the pencil on the rough paper suddenly abraded his nerves in all the wrong ways. Jim opened his eyes and allowed his sentinel senses to roam free. 

Blair decisively stabbed a punctuation point on his page. “What do you sense?”

“We got a watcher.” 

“Yeah?” Blair appeared supremely unconcerned, but his heart rate picked up an extra beat.

“Kid, about twenty two. Dark eyes. Dark brown, short curly -- actually it’s more tousled -- hair. Pretty slight -- skinny. He’s stopped at the gate.”

“Hmm.” Blair lifted his head from his writing and leaned out over the balcony to look down the path to the gate on the fence that bordered their property. He pushed his glasses up his nose with his finger and absently scrunched his face to better see the interloper. “What is he?”

Jim concentrated. “He’s twitching; he’s a pilgrim.” 

“What does he look like he’s doing? Is he going to come up the path or does he just want to look at the house?”

Jim finally leaned out of his deckchair to look out over the balcony. His sight telescoped down the cobblestone path. The young man was jittery with anticipation; trying to decide to come up the path as he rocked from foot to foot. Once he stopped and made to turn away, but he paused and looked back to their house with a look of mute indecision. 

“And?” Blair asked. 

“He wants to visit but he’s a fan.”

“He’s not a bit _too_ much of a groupie, is he?” 

“No,” Jim said abstracted, “he….” His mouth fell open with a soundless oh. 

“What?” Blair grabbed his stick propped up beside his chair and levered himself to his feet to try for a better view of the kid, but he too far way to be seen clearly. 

“He’s a guide,” Jim said. 

“A guide? Hah!” Blair leaned far out over the edge of the deck and waved expansively to the younger guide, gesturing him up the path. 

Jim watched the boy’s eyes widen. He almost tripped over his feet in his haste as he tried to unhook the gate.

“Are you going to go and put the kettle on?” Blair asked. 

“No.”

“Come on, Jim; be a good host.”

“We’ll see what he wants first. Then I’ll offer him milk and cookies.”

“I think that it will be perfectly safe to leave me on the porch.” Blair wasn’t too fast on his sticks, but they didn’t stop him going anywhere he wanted to or whacking people on the shin if they deserved it. 

The kid jogged up the path. Jim settled back regally on his chair and did what he did best -- watch. Their visitor was a little younger than he had first guessed, and Jim mentally readjusted his age to nineteen or so. He was pumped; dark eyes brilliant with excitement. The kid was either sporting dark brown grisi bristles on his top lip and chin -- as was the current vogue for Miami Vice like stubble -- or he had forgotten to shave. Jim stroked his own smooth chin. The child stopped just by the stairs leading up to the deck and waited. Jim gave him points for his control. 

“Come on up,” Blair carolled. 

A leap and a bound and the kid jumped on the deck, white flamboyant shirt giving him a piratical air. For one moment Jim thought that he was going to bow. 

“Professor Blair…” he began and promptly forgot what he was going to say or he was so overcome that he was struck dumb. 

Blair smiled widely and patted the wicker armchair at his side. “Take a pew, kid.”

The kid dropped into the seat. His mouth worked again and he failed to get a word out. 

“I’m Blair. This is Jim.” Jim sat stolidly through the introduction. “And you are?”

“Laurence,” he blurted. 

“Laurence?”

“Laurence Álvarez. I’m studying at the Academy -- it’s summer break,” he added unnecessarily, as both knew darn well that it was the Academy’s summer break.

“Where’s your sentinel, Laurence?” Jim asked. 

Laurence perched on the edge of his seat. “He’s down on the beach looking for crabs. He loves rock pooling.”

“He didn’t want to come up?” Blair asked. 

“Oh boy, yeah, he would have come up in an instant -- but he didn’t want to disturb you. He thought that you deserved to be left alone. He’s not too pleased with me.” Laurence cocked his head to the side and smiled sublimely. “He thinks that I’m impertinent.” 

Jim could feel Blair inwardly chortling. 

“So to what do we owe to the pleasure of this visit?” Blair said with a serious hint of an English accent and Jim realised that the kid had a lilt of an accent in his voice. 

Laurence slipped off his chair and onto his knees. 

“No, don’t!” Blair said immediately and struggled on his chair to reach out to stop the boy. 

With infinite gentleness -- so carefully that Jim didn’t stop him reaching for his guide -- Laurence caught Blair’s hands. 

“I have to thank you, Guide Sandburg. Without you and your sentinel, I would never have… got… found Bob. Bob’s bad… I don’t mean a bad sentinel -- his control’s not that good. Well, it is now -- he’s great. He’s got the controls down pat. But without the Academy he would have been relegated to a special school. He was diagnosed -- incorrectly, of course -- with asymptotic autism as a six year old. I would have never found him. I had to come see you and thank you.” His eyes filled with shining tears that refused to spill and he said slowly, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Blair matched the kid for shining tears in his eyes, but one welled and burgeoned to trickle down his cheek. Blair squeezed Laurence’s hands. 

“You are more than welcome, my young friend, more than welcome.”

_Finis_


End file.
